Deciding to Renovate or Convert Your Hotel
As a hotel owner or developer, protecting your investment may require you to renovate or convert your property to another use. If you’re facing this decision, National Builders will help you because we have more than 30 years of experience in hospitality construction. We build new hotels, and we renovate, convert, or repurpose older properties.
Property Improvement Plan (PIP) or Renovating Your Hotel
When your hotel looks dated, dirty, or damaged, it is time to renovate before reviews discourage guests. You don’t want to see reviews that say you have peeling wallpaper, dirty carpets, and outdated furniture.
National Builders helps you decide if a renovation that revives rooms, improves the common area experience, restores damaged walls, and replaces furniture is sufficient to improve a guest’s experience. We make improvements that can change your hotel’s look and improve its energy efficiency. One such renovation project we did was the Marriott Hotel in Springfield, MA where we re-designed and renovated the guestroom, guest corridor, restaurant and lobby for a better overall guest experience.
One of the benefits of renovating your hotel is to improve its appearance and guest reviews. Another benefit is that renovation lowers your hotel’s maintenance and repair costs.
Does Your Hotel Franchiser Require a Property Improvement Plan (PIP)?
A PIP is a mandate that hotel franchises (Hilton, Marriott, etc.) place on hotel owners. Franchisers require franchisees to renovate their hotel between five and seven years to meet the brand standards. The franchiser’s design team periodically visits hotels to assess their physical condition, quality of services, and other branding items.
After the visit, the design team develops a comprehensive renovation plan with a completion timeline for the hotel. The sale of a hotel to new owners automatically mandates a PIP. If a franchisee decides to change the hotel brand from an IHG Holiday Inn Express to a Hilton Hampton Inn and Suites, it requires a PIP. A lender may require a hotel buyer to complete a PIP to help secure financing for a hotel asset.
National Builders has extensive experience over the last 30 years working with owners to fulfill the construction requirements of their hotel PIP. If you’re facing a PIP project, we will help you.
Converting Your Hotel for Alternative Use
If you’re a hotel owner or developer who needs to consider converting their property to alternative use, you have various options.
Hotel conversion can be a temporary or permanent transition. It can be for financial relief or for an opportunity to reposition your asset for better returns. Repurposing hotels require expertise to evaluate the feasibility for structure changes, land use, zoning, and more.
The range of alternate uses includes temporary use as housing for healthcare or colleges. Permanent hotel conversion ranges from a mixed-use property with partial permanent residency and partial hotel to multifamily housing, co-living development, or assisted living.
National Builders helps you consider your hotel conversion and repurposing options. Our evaluation process includes many questions like the ones below before making a recommendation.
Does your hotel have the proper layout and structure?
Some hotel layouts make better conversions than others. For example, an extended-stay hotel with kitchenettes will likely be more feasible to convert to multi-housing than other hospitality properties. On the other hand, a full-service hotel with oversized guestrooms and underutilized meeting spaces may work well as an assisted-living facility.
If your hotel has physical items such as ceiling heights or irregular floor layouts that are not easily adaptable, they will complicate your repurposing options.
Is your location suitable for alternative use?
If your hotel is in an area with a growing population, you may have an opportunity to convert to multifamily housing, if legal and zoning restrictions allow it.
Will your redevelopment costs outweigh your return on investment?
National Builders will evaluate the costs of structural changes needed and the timeline based on the potential conversion options. With a thorough property assessment, you will be able to determine your investment return with your hotel alternative use options.
Adaptive Reuse of Hotels
Adaptive reuse of hotels is another phrase associated with hotel conversion or hotel repurposing. With the demand for housing on the rise, converting hotel rooms to apartments presents a feasible option for hotel owners and developers.
Hotel adaptive reuse also describes a hospitality trend of reusing older buildings or sites for a new hotel. Rather than demolishing a building with historical value, developers preserve the structure and adapt it for hotel use. Restoring older buildings often come with tax credits.
Creative adaptive reuse projects across the United States include transforming car factories, warehouses, theaters, and old bank buildings into contemporary hotels.
National Builders will help you evaluate an adaptive reuse opportunity. We have extensive experience assessing and reconstructing older buildings that require code conformance and mechanical and electrical upgrades to meet today’s technologies.